Cat Telling Tales

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  Joe said, “Word gets around. If she was pulling scams on her buyers, who else would hire her?” Out through the wide living room windows, they could see down the hill to the roof of Ryan and Clyde’s cottage, Ryan’s truck still parked at the curb. Two blocks over was Hanni’s deep blue roof, her own van parked halfway into the garage, and two blocks to the right of Hanni’s, forming a rough triangle, the meth house stood forlorn with its curled shingles and overgrown yard. A neighborhood in transition, people forced to move away, uneasy events among the homes they left behind, dramas that could well fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw. Was a pattern taking shape here that would lead directly back to Hesmerra and to the fire, and to the poison that killed her?

  Below them, Kit sat with her back to the view, her attention centuries away on a narrow, cobbled street between houses built of wattle and thatched roofs, a medieval street that must speak deeply to the tortoiseshell’s romantic dreams. To Joe, dreams of the past were pointless, ancient history was, after all, forever gone and useless, and uncomfortably he turned away. Silently Dulcie followed him, amused and annoyed by her practical and hardheaded tomcat.

  The house wasn’t large. A hall led back to a bedroom and bath on the right, and to a master bedroom straight ahead that took up the whole back of the house. The bed in the smaller room smelled of the two little girls and of chocolate candy, but it was neatly made. Padding into the master suite, they looked out through the glass doors to a back patio, its tile paving matching the interior floors. An empty swimming pool just outside the glass was covered with heavy, transparent plastic that sagged beneath a pile of pine needles and oak leaves from the woods beyond the white brick wall. Against the wall itself stood oversized pots of tall, drought-resistant grasses in shades of bronze and gold.

  In the bedroom, the only furniture remaining was a king-sized bed that smelled of Debbie, and a large office desk along one wall, with a swivel typing chair. The closet was all but empty, a few limp jackets hanging at one end, a lone hanger fallen to the floor. A large suitcase lay on the floor, too, and was heavy when they pushed at it; and when Dulcie leaped up to the closet shelf, its dusty surface showed the marks where two smaller bags had been removed. She glanced down at Alain’s expensive leather suitcase. “Why did she leave that?” The shelf smelled of Debbie, too, and she could see where Debbie had smeared the dust, probably reaching above her head, searching, for what? She dropped down again to sniff at the leather bag. It was secured with a little padlock; maybe they’d find the key, maybe not. The whole room smelled of Debbie, as did every drawer in the master bath, as if she’d gone through the entire house.

  While Dulcie went to inspect the kitchen, Joe had a go at the desk. This was not a desk someone would pay to have moved, just an ordinary office-supply model made of fake oak laminate. The dusty cubbyhole that yawned in the left-hand pedestal was pocked with small black marks where a computer had stood. A thick, old-style monitor had been left behind. The blotter was still in place, dog-eared and incised with various notations, phone numbers, little floor plan sketches, used perhaps to clarify Alain’s memory of some particular house as she talked with a client. Beside it, a rectangle with less dust showed where something the size of a briefcase, or laptop, had lain. There was no dust on the drawer handles, and Debbie’s scent was strong. The desk’s file drawer was marred and dented with fresh scratches, as if someone had jimmied the lock. When Joe fought the drawer out, pulling with stubborn claws, he could see that the lock’s little metal arm was broken off.

  Rearing up, he pawed through the hanging folders. Most were empty, folders labeled for house insurance, car insurance, medical records. Alain had left behind files of notes about old sales, but nothing more recent than four years. If there’d been anything of interest to others, had Debbie made off with it? Climbing into the dark drawer, he pawed under the files. He felt the broken metal bar, cold against his paw. Lying beside it was a small cardboard folder. He clawed it out, was backing out with it in his teeth when Dulcie returned from prowling the kitchen and leaped up beside him. Dropping the folder on the desk, he flipped it open.

  It was one of those studio photographer’s folders with a picture inserted inside, into the cardboard frame. The photo was of a couple, maybe in their sixties, a small, thin man, and a big square woman, both with sour looks on their faces. A younger version of the hefty woman stood in front of them. A daughter, perhaps? Didn’t any of them know how to smile? Both women were frumpy, looked as if their clothes had come from a markdown rack, perhaps from the middle of the last century. The women had mousy brown hair, square faces, and pasty white skin, and were surely mother and daughter. The man, by contrast, was a neat little fellow dressed in a three-piece suit, white shirt and subdued tie, his thin cheeks clean shaven, narrowing down to a precisely trimmed goatee. There was not any notation to indicate their identity.

  “Flip it out of the frame,” Dulcie said. “Maybe there’s something on the back. Here.” Hissing with impatience, she pawed the picture out.

  But there was nothing, only Debbie’s smell, though she hadn’t been interested enough to take the picture with her. Dulcie slid it back into the cardboard frame, and pushed that into the drawer. “They stayed here more than one night. Leftover pizza in the refrigerator, half a hamburger, a carton with some vile-looking spaghetti. A little carton of milk that’s just going sour. Wrappers and takeout cartons in the trash, too.” She frowned, her ears at half-mast. “What was Debbie looking for? If this is about custody of the children, about proving Erik’s having an affair, why bother? If he wanted the kids, why would he leave them in the first place, why not take them with him?”

  “Why would either of them want Vinnie?”

  “Debbie would, they’re exactly alike, Vinnie’s one of her own. Maybe she’s afraid when Erik gets back from his vacation, finds out she’s here in the village, he’ll claim custody, jinx Debbie’s claim for support payments. No kids, no child support. Maybe that’s all this comes down to, Debbie’s grab for support money.”

  But Joe didn’t think so. “Say Erik is into some kind of scam, Erik and Alain together. Debbie would look for proof and, who knows, maybe Hesmerra was after the same thing, when she cleaned for Alain.”

  Dulcie licked her paw. “If Alain is doing more than trading down, she gets out when that’s discovered, wants to cover her tracks before she’s charged with real estate fraud? She skips, leaves Erik holding the bag?”

  “Maybe.” Joe smoothed his whiskers with a quick paw. “Maybe Hesmerra was spying for Debbie, maybe they weren’t as estranged as Debbie let on. That would explain the Kraft business papers in the metal box Emmylou lifted. Erik finds out the old woman is snooping, and he silences her. Say he killed her, looked for whatever papers she’d taken, but didn’t find anything? So he sets the house on fire, to destroy the evidence.”

  In the dining loft, when they looked down through the wrought-iron railing, Kit was still engrossed, rearing up on her hind paws before the mural studying every smallest detail, her dark nose twitching as if she could actually smell the cobbled streets, the wandering sheep and chickens, the homely scents of suppers cooking in the stone and wattle cottages; they watched her dreaming away until suddenly she looked up and saw them, looked embarrassed, dropped down and turned her back as if she had no interest at all in that lost world.

  They left Alain Bent’s house through the cellar window. Leaping up one at a time from the cardboard cartons to the sill, swinging and kicking, they fled up and over, and down into the garden beneath a holly bush bright with red berries. Crouching beneath their stickery shelter, they looked down at the neighborhood laid out below them. At the Damen cottage, the front door was open and they could see Ryan and Clyde kneeling just inside on the living room floor.

  “They’re praying?” Dulcie said, twitching a whisker.

  “Praying it’ll hold together,” Joe said, “that it won’t collapse when they drive the first nail.” Rock stood on the little porch outsi
de the open door, his long leash looped around one of the stanchions. He was looking up the hill, his ears erect, watching them or maybe listening, where they hid among the holly shadows. Weimaraners were sight as well as scent hounds, they could spot a bird in the sky when it was less than a speck, when even Joe and Dulcie could see nothing.

  Ryan and Clyde seemed to be examining the linoleum, they had one corner up and were peering at the floor beneath. Joe said, “Maybe they plan to rip it out. Who wants linoleum in a living room?” The minute he spoke, as far away as they were, Rock’s tail began to wag madly, he jumped off the porch, tightening his leash and whining. Amused, they went still; they didn’t speak again, they let him settle down so he wouldn’t break his leash and come charging up the hill.

  Two blocks over, at Hanni’s remodel, someone was at work clearing out a flower bed, turning the earth as if preparing it for the bright cold weather cyclamens that stood in flats along the drive. “Billy Young,” Joe said. “Maybe Hanni hired him for the day.” They didn’t see his bike, Hanni must have picked him up at the ranch. Billy looked up as Detective Juana Davis’s Toyota came down the street and parked in front of the cottage. A black-and-white was right behind her, and the department’s SUV pulled up behind it. “What’s this?” Joe said softly. “What’s happened?”

  Leaving their prickly shelter, they headed down through the tangled yards. Below them, young Officer Jimmie McFarland stepped out of the van, his brown hair falling in a boyish cowlick over his forehead. He and Davis stood talking with Hanni, then moved into the garage. The two officers in the black-and-white stayed where they were. Not until the cats were halfway across the yard could they see inside the garage clear to the back, where Juana Davis had set her black satchel on the workbench and was removing a camera. Slipping closer, they settled down among the yard’s overgrown geraniums to see what they had missed.

  17

  The U-Haul was headed slowly through the jammed-up traffic of downtown San Francisco when Pan reared up against the passenger window and began to yowl and paw against the glass.

  “What?” Denise said, scowling over at him. “You can’t get out here, in the middle of the city. You out of your mind? You have to go? I knew I should have fixed up a sandbox. You’ll have to hold it, tomcat. There, there’s a Chevron station up ahead, bound to be some dirt, a patch of garden or lawn.”

  Pan hissed at her, turned back and continued to paw the window, peering out at the busy city.

  Denise saw nothing out there that a cat should get excited about. A white passenger bus traveling alongside them in the slow lane, the driver signaling that he wanted to get over, maybe wanted to make a left. Slowing, she let him in. The bus was full of older women, frizzed hair, long faces and round faces, all as wrinkled as old apples. All of them seemed to be talking at once, gabbing away having a good old time. Some kind of senior outing, she guessed, maybe a group from some retirement home. The script on the bus’s white side said MOLENA POINT FOUNDATION, whatever that was. The driver gave her a wave as he cut over and made a left, into the Chevron station. She pulled in behind him. The minute she did, the tomcat settled right down, for all the world as if he knew she’d pulled in so he could take a leak.

  Smartest cat she’d ever seen; she was already thinking of him as her cat. She’d picked up an unusually handsome and intelligent stray, and she surely meant to keep him. At the first Target or Walmart she passed, she’d pick up some decent cat food, a cat bed and sandbox, all the supplies to make a cat comfortable. She was wondering what to call him, what name would fit the big red tom. He’d do well on her acreage outside Stockton, he was bold and strong and looked like he’d be a good mouser. Her last two cats had died of old age and she was more than ready for a new companion.

  Beyond the three rows of gas pumps and the office and restrooms was a patch of scruffy lawn and a bed of ragged pink geraniums barely surviving in the dry sand. She pulled over there, parked, and because he had come right back into the truck on previous stops, she let the tomcat out. He bolted out in a hell of a hurry, straight into the geraniums. Smiling, she swung out herself, and went to use the women’s more private facilities.

  When she came out, the cat was gone. He wasn’t in the cab, where she’d left the door open. He wasn’t in among the geranium bushes. She searched the paved gas station area, the open bay with its two lifts, and the surround. She called him, sounding foolish shouting, “Kitty, kitty.”

  Afraid he might have been hit by a car, she walked the edge of the highway and then the access road, looking carefully. Returning to her U-Haul, she talked with other drivers who had stopped, but no one had seen him. Finding no clue to where he’d gone, she borrowed some paper and a stapler from the cashier and put up half a dozen signs, on the posts and trees, giving the cat’s description and both her cell number and her Stockton phone number. She went on after several hours, praying for the tomcat and sick with the loss of him.

  Maybe he’d turn up, maybe someone would find him and call her, but she didn’t hold much hope. Moving on through the city, she pulled onto the Bay Bridge with a heavy heart. Why had he vanished like that? There’d hardly been time for someone else to pick him up. Could that cat have had his own agenda and left her on purpose? Was he traveling maybe to rejoin his family, as in some of the strange stories in the paper or on the Web? Cat gets accidentally locked in a truck and carried off, a year later has found his way back home again?

  Whatever this was about, she had lost a friend. Even as short a while as she’d known him, it would take her a long time to get over his loss. She didn’t think, after traveling with this handsome tomcat, there would be another cat in the world who could mean anything to her, who could touch her heart as he had, in that short drive down from Oregon. Heading inland, she made sure her cell was on, in case anyone did call.

  That was the last Denise Woolsey ever saw of the big red tomcat. The last she ever heard of him, though his objective, single-minded destination wasn’t sixty miles, as the crow flies, from her own new home.

  The women on the bus talked nonstop, they were worse than a yard full of chickens announcing their egg-laying scores. Pan, crouched out of sight on the dusty, rough-riding floor, wedged between a bulging cloth shopping bag and a shoe box that smelled of sausages, tried to shut out the shrill voices that had already begun to pound like hammers in his head. Twenty-three women, all of them marathon talkers. Peering out from beneath the last seat, riding practically over the rear wheels and bumpy as hell, he counted two dozen conversations rambling on all at once. A woman sitting right up in front was quizzing the driver querulously. “When will Tom be back? He’s our regular driver. Did you say he’s your cousin? Then you’re Wallace, nice to meet you, Wallace. I hope Tom’s not sick, we all enjoy him, he’s such a riot.”

  The driver didn’t answer, just kept his eyes on the road, as if this shepherding of loquacious women wasn’t his preferred portion of the job description. All Pan could see of him was his gray uniform, wide shoulders, and protruding ears beneath a gray cap. The woman behind him, talking with her face inches from his ear, wore a black slouch hat pulled down as if to hide a bad haircut. Three rows back, two women exchanged a look between them and began to whisper, glancing up at Wallace, then drifted into a discussion of the funniest television shows, a subject that would have put Pan right to sleep except for all the other women talking and giggling among themselves. Too bad he hadn’t spotted a busload of men headed for the same village, at least men’s voices were lower. By the time Wallace had put the city traffic behind them and they were out on the highway rolling along, Pan was wild for solitude, for the restorative peace of the woods and fields that he had left behind him. But then four of the women began to talk about Molena Point, and he came wide awake and alert.

  “We’ve worked on that auction for months,” said a frail little brown-haired woman as bony as a wren. “We’re hoping to bring in at least fifty thousand, maybe more.” At mention of that amount of money, Wallace c
ame to attention, too, his hand tightening on the wheel, his shoulder and head shifting as he positioned himself to hear better. “Fourteen local artists have given work,” the little wren was saying, “four of the nicest hotels have donated luxury weekends for two, and—”

  “That much money?” interrupted a big woman across the aisle. She was dressed in a jacket embroidered with pink flowers, her white-blond hair arranged in an elaborate knot, the white roots showing around her face. “I can’t believe that much money for a bunch of stray cats.” She shook her head, her long gold earrings jangling. “That kind of money should go to fight disease or help starving children. Cats can take care of themselves.”

  “The cats were abandoned,” the wren told her. “They’re house cats, they don’t know how to fend for themselves. Little frightened animals dumped by cold, uncaring people without any feeling,” she said pointedly, “thrown away like garbage.”

  A woman with long dark hair turned around in her seat to stare at the round, complaining woman. “I’m fostering five of the rescue cats. They’re so dear, I don’t know if I’ll want to part with them at all. As for the auction, I’m helping out, and I’m certainly going. I have my eye on one of Charlie Harper’s etchings. There’ll be a mob, I mean to get there early.”

  “What’s troubling,” said a tall, skinny woman in a white sweater and cream-colored slacks, “the auction’s on Sunday, and the banks won’t be open. All that money they take in, a lot of it will surely be in cash. What will they do with it until Monday morning?”

  “Surely no one would steal from a charity,” said a woman whose black hair was so thin you could see her scalp, like spaces in a poorly made bird’s nest. “Surely not from a charity for homeless animals.” Pan thought about the abandoned cats who’d started showing up around Eugene as the economy faltered, hungry, pitiful cats who’d never been on their own. He thought about the Animal Friends’ rescue truck setting out traps, which he had watched with a fierce ambivalence.